For sophomores Bailey Otis and Haley Zajac, Feb. 29, 2012, marks their “fifth” birthday.

Actually, Otis and Zajac turned 20 today, but since it’s leap year, they officially celebrate their actual birth date every four years.

“I’ve been getting a lot of happy fifth birthday cards and a lot of people saying, ‘Oh, you finally get to go to kindergarten,’” Zajac said.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, roughly 205,000 Americans don’t officially have birthdays in a normal year. That means the probability of having a leap day birthday is one in 1,461.

“It’s awesome because it’s my first time having a birthday in college, which is kind of cool because I was 16 for my last birthday,” Otis said.

Otis said that she put her birthday on Facebook one month ago and has been gearing up ever since.

“Facebook doesn’t know how to handle my birthday,” Otis said. “It shows up on the 28th for some people and the first for others.”

Otis said that she typically celebrates her birthday on Feb. 28, but it depends on the circumstances.

“If I have an exam on the 28th, then I’ll celebrate on the first,” Otis said. “I can tweak it to my liking.”

Leap years have one extra day due to the earth’s revolution around the sun. It takes roughly 365 ¼ days for the earth to go around the sun, but the standard calendar year lasts only 365 days. If we were to ignore the extra quarter of a day, strange things would eventually happen to our seasons, like having snow in July.

Zajac thinks that having a leap year birthday makes her “unique.”

“It’s fun because a lot of people don’t understand what it is,” Zajac said. “It’s special.”

Kristopher Jobe and Caroline Rode contributed to this report.

Ryan Shaver can be reached at shav7005@stthomas.edu